The present invention relates to culturing methods and articles.
Thus, the present invention more specifically relates to methods and articles to be used in order to determine the presence of microorganisms in body fluids.
At the present time in order to determine whether or not certain microorganisms are present in a body fluid, it is customary to take a swab of the area where the body fluid is located and transfer part of the body fluid by way of the swab to a culture medium which is placed in an incubator. After a certain time the culture medium is examined to determine whether or not the microorganisms are present.
A number of serious drawbacks reside in this conventional procedure for determining the presence of certain microorganisms. Thus, because the swab is stroked over only part of the area where the body fluid is located, it is easy to neglect to take a sample of that part of the body fluid where the microorganisms are located. For example in the case of a throat infection or in the case of a vaginal infection, it is possible for the swab to be moved over an area where there are no microorganisms even though microorganisms are present directly next to the area engaged by the swab. Under these conditions it is easy to neglect to determine the presence of microorganisms even though the microorganisms actually are in the body fluid.
Furthermore, when the body fluid is transferred by the swab to the culture medium and the culture medium is then placed in an incubator, the microorganisms are compelled to grow outside of the body under conditions quite different from those which prevail in the body. Thus while the microorganisms may grow readily under the conditions prevailing in the body cavity where the microorganisms are located, the conditions in the incubator may be unfavorable for growing the microorganisms, so that in this case also it is possible to fail to determine the presence of microorganisms.
In addition, even if the suspected microorganisms are transferred by the swab to the culture medium, the manner in which the microorganisms grow makes it extremely difficult to determine the presence thereof. Thus a number of different microorganisms are necessarily transferred by the swab to the culture medium. All of these microorganisms grow. The result is that when the culture medium is examined, an exceedingly confusing array of growths are visible. All of these growths are crowded together and spread out over the culture medium, with the result that it becomes extremely difficult to know for certain whether or not the particular microorganisms which are of interest are indeed present.